Christopher Isherwood:

An Inventory of His Collection at the Harry Ransom Humanities
Research Center

The collection comprises
correspondence and works of Isherwood and diaries by him and his mother,
Kathleen Isherwood (1883-1971). The bulk of the materials relates to the
biography of Isherwood's parents,
Kathleen and Frank, which was published in
1971.

RLIN Record #

TXRC93-A2

Extent

4 boxes (1.5 linear
ft.)

Language

English.

Repository

Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center,
University of Texas at Austin

Christopher William Bradshaw-Isherwood was born in Cheshire, England, on
August 26, 1904, to Kathleen Machell-Smith and Frank Bradshaw-Isherwood. His
brother, Richard, was born in 1911. Frank Isherwood was in the British military
and was required to move his family several times, much to Kathleen's
displeasure. She sent Christopher to St. Edmund's boarding school for a proper
education in 1914. There he met W. H. Auden, who was to become a life-long
friend and co-author of several books and plays. The death of Isherwood's
father on May 8, 1915, during a battle in France deeply affected him, not only
in his perspective of his father and how he would relate to his mother, but in
his attitude towards the military and war itself.

Isherwood met Edward Upward, a life-long friend and influence, in 1919
at Repton, a prestigious public school, and later joined him at Corpus Christi
College, Cambridge, in 1923. In 1925, Isherwood was asked to withdraw from the
university and so he took a job in London as a part-time secretary to a string
quartet and began to write novels. The influence of E. M. Forster encouraged
Isherwood to write and publish his first novel,
All the Conspirators in May of 1928.

Throughout Isherwood's life, he knew and worked with many people who
influenced him and whom he influenced. He was known by the Bloomsbury group,
and Hogarth Press published three of his books,
The Memorial: Portrait of a Family (1932),
Lions and Shadows (1938), and
Good bye to Berlin (1939). John Lehmann, a
poet and an editor for the press, became a life-long friend to Isherwood and
they supported each other in their work and in their personal lives.

Isherwood traveled to Berlin in 1929 to escape the social and sexual
inhibitions that he felt in England. He then decided to live there and worked
on his second novel
The Memorial (1932), and what was to become
one of his best known works, the
Berlin Stories. These stories offer an
insight into the pre-Hitler era of Germany and were later developed into the
musical
Cabaret.

Isherwood lived in Berlin from 1930 to 1933. Trying to avoid the
restraints that Hitler was enforcing on Germany, Isherwood and Heinz, his
lover, traveled around Europe looking for a place to settle until 1937 when
Heinz was forced to return to Germany to serve in the army. This affected
Isherwood deeply. Losing the freedoms he had felt in Germany, and knowing that
England could not offer better social conditions than before his departure in
1929, he and W. H. Auden began traveling in the Orient in 1938. During their
travels they wrote,
Journey to a War (1939). They went to the
United States before returning to England. In 1939, the conditions in Europe
were looking more as though war was inevitable, and Isherwood did not want to
be a part of this, so he and Auden returned to the United States and decided to
become American citizens. In New York, Isherwood did not find the haven he had
hoped for and moved to California at the invitation of Gerald Heard. From
October 1941, until July 1942, Isherwood lived in Haverford, Pennsylvania, and
taught English to German refugees through the Society of Friends, a Quaker
organization. Isherwood received his immigration papers and was a conscientious
objector to the war, however, the age was lowered and he never had to serve his
new country.

Isherwood returned to California and worked intermittently in motion
picture studios in Hollywood for over 30 years. Due to this involvement,
Isherwood met and worked with a variety of writers and other people who worked
in the Hollywood community such as Tennessee Williams, Aldous Huxley, Kenneth
Anger, Truman Capote, and Charles Laughton.

Living in Los Angeles, Isherwood became involved with Swami Prabhavanda,
a Hindu monk who was head of the Vedanta Society of Southern California. This
had a major impact on his life, providing a spiritual foundation that supported
his social beliefs as well as his sexual identity. Isherwood had determined
during his years in Berlin that freedom was more than what the left-wing was
preaching at that time, and that the homophobia that prevailed in this movement
was one of the obvious indications that this freedom was to be limited to a
select few. By the 1970s, Isherwood had began to publicly discuss how
homophobia was one aspect of the hate that must be overcome to reach a level of
peace in the world.

Don Bachardy and Isherwood met in 1953 and became lovers in 1954. They
worked together on number of motion pictures, television scripts, and on
dramatizations of Shaw's story
The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for
God (1969) and
A Meeting by the River. Isherwood and
Bachardy remained lovers until Isherwood died in 1986.

The Christopher Isherwood collection has three series: I.
Correspondence, 1940-1960 (1 folder); II. Works, 1883-1970 (3 boxes); and III.
Kathleen Isherwood, 1911-1959 (1 box). The bulk of the collection pertains to
Isherwood's biography of his mother and father,
Kathleen and Frank, published in 1971.

Letters from Isherwood consist of one letter and one telegram to Jane
and Paul Bowles (1955), a letter to Peter Gamble (1940), four letters to Gerald
Hamilton (1962-63), and a form letter to prospective subscribers of
Vedanta and the West (1960). The
Correspondence series is arranged in alphabetical order. Additional
correspondence to and from Isherwood can be found in other manuscript
collections, see the list of other materials held by the HRC.

The notes and typescript for
Kathleen and Frank are the bulk of the
collection. Also in the Works series are the typescript for
Down There on a Visit, (1962, originally
part of the T.E. Hanley, III collection), and a reprint of
What Vedanta Means to Me, (1951). The
typescript for
Kathleen and Frank was sent in sections to
Isherwood's brother, Richard, for his approval and corrections prior to being
sent to the publisher. Some of these sections are accompanied by letters to
Richard and have been retained with the typescripts. There are very few
corrections or additions on the typescripts, yet there are differences between
the typescript and the published edition. This series is arranged
alphabetically by the title of the work, with notes preceding the typescripts
for
Kathleen and Frank. Two of Isherwood's
diaries, 1917 and 1934, are housed at the end of this series.

Kathleen Isherwood's diaries span in date from 1911-1959 with gaps for
the years 1949 and 1952-56. Transcripts of her diaries from 1883-1916 are also
part of the collection, but are in Series II as part of the preparation for
Kathleen and Frank.

The collection is in good condition, except for folder 1.5 of the
typescript for
Kathleen and Frank which has been slightly
damaged by moisture and mold. These pages have been placed in mylar for
protection due to their weakened state.